It's -9 up here in Edinburgh. Send me another climate? This one's broken.

(Chorus of "this disproves global warming - it's political correctness gone mad!!!" from the usual suspects starting in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ... )

It does require a certain wilful disregard of what the whole global warming argument has been - more energy in the system means more extremes in both directions - to think that heavy snowfalls disprove it.

It's the Irish I'm worried about. It's not supposed to happen in the South.

(OMG WTF - Midge covered 'Goodbye to Love'? I really should have listened to this CD before.)

What, you mean you can’t do climatology by looking out the window?

Of course you can. At least, you can if you're one of those highly paid Mail columnists.

My, admittedly dodgy, memory tells me that there were winters like this in my childhood. Mind you, I could easily be concatenating memories of Canada snowfall with memories of UK Midlands snowfall and making the latter heavier and more frequent than they really were :)

It is, according to our thermometer, 2 degreees C in the utility - I'm guessing a couple of degrees colder outside. No, I'm not going out to check. *brrrrr*

Your childhood was in Nottinghamshire? That's a bit further north than where you are now. And I think there will be some conflation.

The winters I really remember as snowy were:

The winter of 1977/8 I spent in Dundee. I'd never seen snow like that - the trains had difficulty running, and the double decker bus in to work from Broughty Ferry would slide all over the road.

In 1981/2, I spent the winter in Derby (with Christmas in Glossop). I recall just how much colder that winter was than I was used to Darn Sarf - I think it actually got as cold in south Derby as it is outside here today.

Those were the only two winters I spent much further north than we are here. They were also the most cold and snowy ones I remember. So I tend to assume the snowiness was at least partially due to the distance north.

As for the temperature outside where you are - I'd expect more than a couple of degrees difference, assuming that the utility has as much wall common with the house as it has outside walls.

Both sets of grandparents lived in Nottingham, so pretty much every Xmas holiday (except when we were overseas) was spent at one or other (and usually shuttling between the two over the two "important" days) - there was also the year or so that we lived there when Mum and Dad were getting divorced (before they made the stupid decision to "try again for the sake of the children"[1]).

I also remember quite hot summers over the school holidays - paddling pool in the garden, playing with the hosepipe - except for one year when the water was turned off and we had to fill containers from the truck that came around every evening.

[1] No, my dear parents, you do NOT get to blame me for your fucked up decision and your fucked up marriage.

As for the temperature outside where you are - I'd expect more than a couple of degrees difference, assuming that the utility has as much wall common with the house as it has outside walls.

No heating on in the utility though, so the heat generation in there comes from the freezer / leakage through the door from the lounge and the tumble dryer when it's on (with the window open)

Makes a damn good chiller for Xmas :)

I was assuming an unheated room, with roughly equivalent heat leakage in from the heated portion of the house and out through the exterior wall.

If the window's open all the time, then there's much less insulation in that direction.

For what it's worth, at lunchtime yesterday the external temperature was -8C, while the temperature in our garage (which is not adjacent to any heated room, has no loft insulation, and one face of which is a garage door rather than a wall) was -2C.

Here in Leicester it's cold (car claimed it was -6 this morning) without the snow. We have maybe 1cm of snow left over from Saturday afternoon.

Childhood memories are of snow that was never very thick and quickly turned to slush, but then I grew up in Holyhead, completely surrounded by the sea; lots of salt around. It did get cold enough a couple of times that there was snow on the beach and I remember icicles on the rocks in the winter of 86/87. I also remembering going to stay with my Gran in Solihull, and the day we came home there was thick snow. We waited ages at Crewe for a train to North Wales and my dad had to collect us from Bangor because the train couldn't get through to Holyhead. This was in the 80s but which year I couldn't say.

My first wife went to university in Bangor, so she could do snow climbing. That's not that far from Holyhead ...

(Though looking at this webcam at the Ty Mawr interchange, Holyhead may actually have proper snow.)

I admit this confuses me a bit. I have been accustomed, this past ten years or so, to being the one drowning under piles of snow in the deep Arctic chill and laughing at y'all's 3-cm "blizzards". Suddenly, the tables are turned! (I'm still laughing, but it's a different flavor of Schadenfreuede.)

You know that application for the place at the LSE?

We're trying to get ready for you.

Edited at 2010-12-20 02:20 pm (UTC)

According to colleagues' car thermometers it was between -11 and -12 ºC a bit north of where you are.

Cycling from the station to the Science Park was fun.

I can believe it.